Ravenhawk

When I was a kid, I had an uncle who was a weightlifter. Having a weight lifter for an uncle meant several things. First, it meant that I was destined to get a pair of Zubaz for Christmas—the classic ones, with the turquoise, black, and white tiger stripes. Second, it meant that I was going to be leafing through bodybuilder and power-lifting magazines. I was a small kid, both in stature and weight, and under my uncle’s well-meaning but sort of half-assed guidance (we are alike in many ways, he and I, and he was always more interested in faking a Russian weightlifting coach accent than he was in actually being a weightlifting coach), I would pull on those Zubaz and hit the weight bench.

My grandparents’ house was stuffed to the gills with copies of Field and Stream, but as I was neither an avid hunter nor fisher, Field and Stream was even less interesting to me than the marathon sessions spent in the basement listening to records full of nothing but turkey calls. And so when I needed to pass the time doing something other than playing Nintendo, I would leaf through the weight lifter magazines which, for some reason, contained endless amusements for me — the best of which was an ad for some contraption or other probably mean to improve your curl form that boasted the legendary slogan, “It’ll kick your butt so you can go out and kick somebody else’s!” Running a close second to that were photos of America’s newest female bodybuilding star and one of the focuses of the documentary Pumping Iron II, a woman by the name of Rachel McLish.

McLish was a pioneer in women’s fitness and bodybuilding, starting out as a gym employee and ending up as the world’s first Ms. Olympia, in 1980. Her success on the bodybuilding circuit became a success as a fitness model and spokesperson. Her bodybuilding career only lasted four years, by the end of which the physique of successful competitors was trending bulkier than McLish. I always thought she would have been a pretty awesome action movie star (if only someone had put her and Lisa Lyon in a movie together) if only the 1980s had been friendly to any sort of action star other than giant white guys. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and women in American action films in that decade were largely relegated to the ranks of wives, girlfriends, and hostages.

Thus, Rachel was relegated to the ranks of workout videos until the 1990s ushered in the golden era of straight-to-video action films. In 1992 McLish finally got herself a role in an action movie, Aces: Iron Eagle III, but it was a supporting role in a movie that had more to do with jets than outright physical action. It wasn’t until the next year that she got to stand front and center in a movie that seemed to worship her biceps as much as I did.

This brings us to director Albert Pyun, a divisive man, to say the least, at least in terms of his output (as a man, he seemed much beloved, as evidenced by the outpouring of support as his health declined and he ultimately, sadly, passed away in 2022). Sure, he made some pretty bad films, but so has Steven Spielberg. So has Francis Ford Coppola. I’m a defender of Pyun’s work. He made a lot of films I quite enjoy—The Sword and the Sorcerer, Cyborg, Radioactive Dreams, Nemesis, to name some of my favorites—and when his films fail, they often fail in a way I find interesting. Different tastes, I guess, but the end result is that I don’t go into Albert Pyun movies with the same fear, trepidation, and horror as most people. I look forward to them. I even seek them out.

I never met Albert Pyun, but I’m going to guess based on his films that he and I share admiration for women with nice biceps. In 1993, he cast kickboxing dynamo Kathy Long (The Stranger) in his post-apocalyptic fight film, Knights. The next year, he directed Kickboxer 4 and gave a decent supporting part to diminutive karate spitfire Michele “The Mouse” Krasnoo. In 1995, he made a loosely connected sequel to Nemesis, with the lead role being passed from a muscular guy to an even more muscular woman, Sue Price. And then, in 1996, Pyun reached back into the muscle mags I’d flipped through as a kid and gave Rachel McLish a starring role in Ravenhawk.

As a child, young Rhyia Shadowfeather witnesses her shaman mother and father murdered by a gang of white men who want to remove the Shadowfeathers, who are opposed to the construction of a shoddy power plant on reservation land. The white guys include Mulder and Scully’s X-Files boss (Mitch Pileggi) and the undisputed king of playing smug pricks, William Atherton. They manage to pin the murders on the little girl, claiming that she went ape shit during some sort of drug-addled ritual gone bad. Because the trauma of seeing her parents murdered has rendered her mute, she can’t really offer up much defense. With the local government bought and paid for, she not only gets convicted but gets tried more or less as an adult, committed for life to the mental institute wing of the local women’s prison. There, she doesn’t do much but dedicate herself to a psychotic workout regimen, which eventually results in her growing up to be Rachel McLish. When a van transferring her to a new facility crashes, Rhyia is presumed dead but actually escapes the flames and begins a campaign of tracking down the murderers and getting a little revenge.

Albert Pyun always worked with a low budget, which means he’s learned how to frame the traditional low-rent settings of cheap films: deserts and old factories. In Ravenhawk, he makes the most of the sprawling vistas of the American Southwest, including some dramatic work around bridges and cliffs. At these two locations, he pulls off some pretty incredible stunts, including a fall off a cliff that seems to go forever. It’s insane, and I can hardly even conceive of how they did it without killing the guy. The rest of the scenery is usually augmented by the form of Rachel McLish, who while not a great actress when it comes to delivering lines, is fantastic when it comes to looking pissed off, muscular, and beating the crap out of people. Pyun gives her ample opportunity to engage in all manner of stuntwork and physical feats, and it’s no surprise how good she looks in action.

It helps that she’s surrounded by one of the more talented casts Pyun ever put together. Even though they’re plying their trade in a low-budget Pyun action movie, no one is half-assing it. Michael Pileggi is delightfully sleazy, playing very much against type back when his type was a guy in a suit who did little more than say, “Agent Mulder, this sounds crazy.” William Atherton is William Atherton, doing his William Athertony best to give the screen another in his long line of condescending pricks. The guy is just so good at it. The rest of the cast is pretty capable, including a gang of killers the white guys call in to kill McLish. John Enos shows up as a sympathetic special agent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (I think) trying to put an end to all the killings. He’s inconsequential, but he looks hot being inconsequential.

In the tradition of the best exploitation films, especially those in the small “pissed off Native Americans” subgenre, Pyun and screenwriter Kevin Elders (who wrote the three Iron Eagles movies) inject a host of social issues into the action, including here political corruption, environmental destruction, and racism against Native Americans. There’s very little subtlety in the writing. The evil guys are EVIL, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. As with Mark Gregory in the Thunder Warrior films, the answer to all problems is to blow shit up, shoot suckers with a bow and arrow, and jump motorcycles over whatever obstacle happens to be convenient. And while Ravenhawk has the same sort of weird pacing that all Pyun films seem to have, it certainly doesn’t lag in the important departments of blowing shit up, killing suckers, and jumping motorcycles over things.

As was par for the course in movies at the time, McLish was Tezas-born and of Mexican heritage (Raquel Livia Elizondo was her birth name) rather than Native American. The film was shot in Paige, Arizona and around the “Big Rez” so it makes sense that Rhyia Shadowfeather is supposed to be Diné, though I can’t remember if it’s ever mentioned, but it does try to shine a light on how frequently corporate interests benefit from screwing over the locals and how no attention is paid by the rest of the country to the things that go on within the confines of the country’s reservations.

I wasn’t fearful of watching Ravenhawk the way some people are about tackling an Albert Pyun film. Still, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed the movie. It was great watching McLish in action, but the whole film was a pretty satisfying low-budget adventure. It’s a simple, streamlined plot that benefits from not getting hacked and repacked during production the way some of Pyun’s films had to be due to budget and production issues. The story makes sense, and everything is paced well. It’s a shame that McLish didn’t continue acting. Despite her stilted line delivery, she was built for the world of low-budget action and could have become a pretty impressive staple if she’d pursued it.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and while she remained active as an advocate for women’s fitness and strength training, Iron Eagles III and Ravenhawk remain her only feature films. Ah well, it is what it is. But good on ya, Rachel, and you too, Albert Pyun. Ravenhawk isn’t a movie that is going to convince a Pyun hater that he has talent, but if you are like me and have an easygoing ability to roll with Pyun’s peculiarities, Ravenhawk makes for a pretty pleasant tale of violent revenge and punching William Atherton in the face.